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The Portland Police Bureau just released crime statistics for the first four months of the year. Let's take a look at how it stacks up against the same timeframe of the past five years. Check out the stats at the bottom (and, while we're at, read this David Simon post about police juking stats).

The good-ish news:

"Overall crime is down 2%, including a remarkable 74% drop in homicides," the bureau reports, compared to the average of the first four months of the past five years. There were two homicides through April this year, compared to an average of eight.

There's been fewer documented sex offenses, simple and aggravated assaults, arsons, residence and "other" burglaries, shoplifting incidents, fraud and identity theft, and less "other" property incidents. There's been a significant decrease in drug law violations (618 compared to an average of 1,114) and prostitution busts (64 vs. 84).

The bad news:

Robberies are up, as are burglaries at businesses, bike thefts, thefts from and of cars, vandalism, and weapons offense.

Reported gang violence is also up this year: "As of May 12, 2016, there have been 65 gang-related violent crimes, the majority of them involving gun violence. At the same time in 2015, there had been 48 incidents of gang violence."

Here are the stats the PPB just released: